Soap Opera

'chance meetings, coincidences, missed meetings, sudden conversions, last-minute rescues and revelations, deus ex machina endings.'"
Steve Neal, author of book Genre and Hollywood, on Soap Operas.

A soap opera, often shortened to just Soap is a major part of British culture. Soap operas are one of the most frequently followed programmes on terrestrial television. They focus on the characters in the programme leaving a basic everyday location and props. The extreme high viewing figures and fellowship can be said to be down to the audiences ability to relate to these characters. Their popularity was shown during the peak viewing which occurred during the Christmas day episode of Eastenders in 1986, it was watched by 30.15 million viewers over two days. This indicates that for our soap opera we must try to connect to the audience and convey the feelings of the characters involved, as it is clear to me that character empathy is key for the successful viewing.

Key characteristics and conventions:

Tend to focus on everyday characters and situations
Frequently set in working class environments
Sometimes feature comedic aspect
Stereotyped characters (the gossip, the sexually promiscuous, the handsome male character ect)

The main two soaps are Eastenders, broadcasted on BBC1 since 1985 and Coronation Street, broadcasted on ITV1 since 1960. I am therefore going to focus my research into these two soaps. They both deal with issues that face normal media consumers in everyday life including relationship issues, financial problems and death. It is vital that Zara and I incorporate a realistic storyline throughout our coursework. We are going to try and make our advert as realistic as possible.